Let teams decide for themselves how money is split.

[traverseda]

Right now you've got a lot of very ideological and complicated code in how teams get paid out.

Please note that no one, not even the team account owner, can change a member's take. The team account owner can only add or remove members.

That's simply not practical for a lot of projects.

I'd suggest having a bunch of different methods for managing team payments, including what you have now and completely central management by the team owner.

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[chadwhitacre]

Right now you've got a lot of very ideological and complicated code in how teams get paid out.

I'm not sure how this is a helpful observation, because any algorithm for splitting team money within Gittip is going to encode an ideology (more or less), and is going to be complicated (more or less). We tried one method ("everyone votes on everyone else") and then we moved to the current method ("kids eat first").

That's simply not practical for a lot of projects.

The obvious workaround is to simply not handle team splits within Gittip. Withdraw the money to a bank account and distribute it from there however you like.

I'd suggest having a bunch of different methods for managing team payments, including what you have now and completely central management by the team owner.

This would address your ideological concern, though not your complication concern. :-)

We've got a 0, 1, infinity problem here. Right now we're at 1. Going to infinity is a lot of work, and does it add sufficient value over the available workaround?

[chadwhitacre]

I should add that with the writeable tips.json API, another workaround would be to update the project's giving based on whatever algorithm the project would like (cf. how Khan does it). This approaches ideas that surfaced somewhere on #449 (iirc), though transparency might be an issue.

[traverseda]

Allowing the team owner or manager to set a weekly payout for each team member seems like a pretty good way to deal with whatever system anyone comes up with. They can implement a spreadsheet, or just type the numbers in manually.

You can already redirect some of your own funds. Just make that process optionally more transparent, and make it more obvious who's part of a team.

I tried to address the ideology thing here.

[zbynekwinkler]

I think in the future we should put more effort into making gittip into a platform so that the infinity of the solutions is made by someone else. Writable tips api is a first (partial) step in that direction. We should try to design the rest so that the money stays within gittip (thus recommend sending it off and split elsewhere as a last resort).

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @chrisdev in IRC.

[chrisdev]

👍 to all @traverseda points. I've noticed that this is only a one star issue. This issue should be given more stars as teams are likely to become the key differentiator between Gittip and other funding platforms.

Also @whit537 :+1 the throttling algorithm is a real pain especially for new teams. I can see myself having to constantly remind my team members to increase their takes every week to ensure that they get up to the desired level.

Self managed take it is also easier to implement than than algorithmic approaches as I see it as a primarily as a user interface change.

On the team page we could have a section called Pay Out Method for now this could be check box with (for now) two options

1. Self Managed - (The team account owner will use own method for allocating the team take)
2. Git Tip Classic - (Use the take splitting algorithm described here https://www.gittip.com/about/teams/)

If [Self Managed] is selected, then only the team account owner can set the the take of members.
The take splitting algorithm will be done outside of Gittip. using what ever method to team has decided on for allocating its funds.

The Team account owner enters the relative take (the percentage) for each team member.
The system works it out the dollar amount rounded to the latest cent.
I think that the percentage take will have to be used else the team account owner will have to enter a dollar amount each week which tedious!

[pjz]

👍

[chadwhitacre]

@davereid on #2756:

We're really struggling with the way group member takes are set up with https://gratipay.com/DrupalCoreGittipTeam/members/. It would be quite ideal if we could just equally split whatever is coming in between the members instead of having each member be responsible for how much they are taking, which then can affect other members getting no take at all.

[YesCT]

I had to remind each team member to up their take when we started with $1.
! Maybe a person could set something like: double me until I get to X max. That way people would not forget, and I would not have to set reminders.

I didn't mind that too much... that it took 6 weeks to get to $64 per week...
but once we got there, we really would rather set a max for our group.

Letting each person take less is cool. Not everyone in the team needs as much as the next.

But right now, we want to evenly distribute the money, and I had to ping several people several times to reduce to $32 from $64. Some people were on vacation (which is cools).

! So... I dont need to control how much each person takes... but I would like, as an admin of our group to set a max each person takes.

[YesCT]

A "evenly distribute" would work too. (as long as each person could still set their own max. So people are not forced to take more money than they want. But they also would not need reminders to keep it even as the amount per week changes up or down.)

[chadwhitacre]

+1 @elliottw at #3480 (comment):

instead of the kids eat first/double your income each week,
team decides on distribution, if team is size=1 then it's a no brainer
if no one makes a decision funds are split equally?? or some slightly smarter algorithm
I think the algorithm with which teams distribute funds has more social impact than most other parts of the app. I'd be curious about a model like "older kids look after younger kids" which I guess would be little like trickle down economics, but now that I type it, it doesn't sound so great.

[chadwhitacre]

Closing in light of our decision to shut down Gratipay.

Thank you all for a great run, and I'm sorry it didn't work out! 😞 💃